Mischief Night: In Which Slasher Honey Cannot Resist Expletives

It’s been a hell of a week to say the least. Everything has made me angry. And just when I thought I couldn’t get any angrier, I was proven wrong by the slasher of the week, Mischief Night.

Not because it was bad film, mind you. But because despite multiple arguments that horror movie fanatics like myself are desensitized, never has a horror film gotten to me emotionally more than this one did. And I’ll tell you why in a minute.

But I’m going to tell you upfront that I love this movie and I demand that you watch it.

Everybody has their problems, and teenager Emily has enough of them to make anyone sigh and go “Maybe my life’s not so bad after all.” Her mother died in a tragic car accident that caused Emily to eventually go blind afterwards, her father’s a mess, and she has also has asthma. But she’s kickass and not letting anything keep her down for too long. It’s pretty hard not to root for her. Damn near impossible.

So imagine the fury (and Emily’s surprise) when on the night of her father’s first date since her mother’s death, some asshole in a yellow poncho decides to terrorize her while she’s alone in the house. Yeah. Fuck that. Because it becomes obvious pretty fast (as if weren’t already so from the film’s opening kill scene) that this is not a random home invasion with someone taking the night before Halloween to the extreme. No, this douche bag has clearly been watching and stalking Emily. Because he definitely KNOWS that she is blind. He makes no effort to hide from her. And he’s exploiting Emily’s blindness, using her disadvantage to his benefit. Talk about an unfair fight.

It was infuriating. The more terrified poor Emily got, one can literally feel one’s body temperature rising. It was like a more exaggerated, higher stakes version of the high school jocks who bully not each other or other large guys who just don’t want to be jocks, but instead bully the skinny nerds without muscles who pose no threat to them anyway.

But here’s the thing. As much as the concept could anger a viewer, it all made for some truly disturbing scenes. Home invasion has never been so terrifying. Watching the killer stalk Emily INSIDE THE HOUSE, walking RIGHT BEHIND HER, without her even knowing it will get to you so much that it will make you never want to be alone again. Trust me on this.

It used to seem that the home invasion meets slasher concept loses something in focusing on a killer pursuing a single person or two inside such a confined space, and the stakes are therefore lowered because you know the victim’s not going to die any time soon or else there would be no movie. But for Mischief Nightthis does not apply. The tension is always high and that’s also the way the stakes always feel. There’s never a boring moment, and I actually found myself closing my eyes at some points because the suspense was just too much and I just knew something I couldn’t handle was about to happen.

If you have an appreciation for misdirects, there’s yet another reason to love this film. They’re so subtle, yet every single moment, you don’t know who to trust and it seems like the characters you should be able to trust might be hiding something. It’s hard to describe just how perfectly this was executed without giving away important parts of the movie, but let’s just say if you go into it with a healthy amount of skepticism for every single character, you won’t be disappointed, even if you turn out to be wrong.

Mischief Night is the perfect movie to watch now on cold nights with a blanket and some hot chocolate, because it’ll keep you entertained, and it’ll give you another reason, besides the cold weather, to curl up as far as you can under the covers.

Slasher Honey Rating: 5 yellow raincoats out of 5Mischief Night is available via iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, Vudu, Google Play, & DVDHave you seen this modern spin on Wait Until Dark? Tell Chassity on Twitter: @ChassMM